The role of metacognitive skills in learning to solve problems

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KM, but one can assume they had at least tacit knowledge about management
in general. The academics and the managers did not receive the
article before playing the game. One can assume that all participants
had at least rudimentary knowledge available about the domain of KM
and more specifically about the model of Wiig et al. (1997).
3.2.4 Summary of results & conclusions
The teams took approximately four hours to go through all four
events. They formulated between 23 and 45 proposals per event. Not all
proposals concerned interventions. Some of them concerned knowledge
management activities that focused on analysing the knowledge household
of Coltec and some were not related to Knowledge Management
activities. In table 3.1 an overview is given of the most salient results.
Event NA % I (AI) % M % NO
Decline of chemistry students 45 85 (69) 6 9
Differences in productivity 45 40 (33) 35 25
New legislation 47 57 (51) 11 32
Competition clause 20 60 (50) 25 15
Table 3.1. Main results for the four events of the Coltec case. (NA = Number
of Actions, I = Interventions, AI = Appropriate Interventions, M = Management
activities, NO = NOt KM-related actions)
Several conclusions can be drawn from this exploratory study that
guide the design of a simulation-game for the domain of KM.
Players act upon the instruction given and write down their actions
for the events. They engage in relevant discussions about the domain
of KM and they try to solve the problems stated in the events. The
actions include appropriate interventions for the events. The percentage
of appropriate interventions ranges between 33 and 69%. A minority
of the actions refer to management activities. This percentage ranges
between 6 and 35%. Some actions are not related to the domain of
KM. For instance, a typical action of players for event 4 is to buy the
competitor in order to retrieve the knowledge of the former employee
who is working for the competitor. This is not a KM-related action.
The percentage of non-KM related actions ranges between 9 and 32%.
The question is, however, to what extent the KM model as described
by Wiig et al. was used in order to come to the interventions proposed.
The article about methods and techniques in KM that was distributed
beforehand gave a rather static image of how to solve KM problems. In